


The Kaiju War Was in IMAX 3D

by Raine_Wynd



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Chuck Lives, Future Fic, Gen, Inspired by Music, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Post-Movie(s), references to other canon characters - Freeform, snapshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-19 08:24:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1462486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raine_Wynd/pseuds/Raine_Wynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Riffing a bit on Jamey Johnson's "In Color" - a news reporter asks for Herc's version of events on the fiftieth anniversary of the closing of the Breach, and this is his reaction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kaiju War Was in IMAX 3D

Herc feels every minute of his age, and bites back the urge to tell the reporter to fuck off. She’s really a lovely young woman, all artfully made up and poised, with the blend of features that makes him think of one of Lucky Seven’s crew, who was half-Vietnamese. It’s not her fault he’s swimming in memories today, or that he feels the pull of the ghosts more than ever.

"It’s been fifty years since you oversaw the closing of the Breach," she reminds him in her clear, articulate English, as if he didn’t know already what day it was. From the look on her face, he knows she grew up hearing his name as some old dude in a history book, and this is her grand reward: interviewing him on an anniversary he’d rather not remember, but can’t ever forget.

The Kaiju War was in IMAX 3D, he wants to tell her, not this digital-dumped-straight-to-your-brain shit. It was more real than you know, will ever know. It was my son nearly dying and my oldest friend honoring a stupid-ass promise he made me one night when we both drunk and hating the fact we’d had to be _dads_ that day and he always hated making Mako cry and I could never spank Chuck the way my father hit me. It was watching a boy who’d lost half his mind find someone to fill the holes and then watch him risk losing it all again, just because he was a Becket, and Beckets never learned to give up, thank God. It was a week of losing people who’d fought for years against the biggest, baddest kaiju, in technology so dated it was killing them (Herc misses the way they’d call each other Sasha, so tangled in their Drift were they), or in the most advanced jaeger ever built before Striker Eureka (the Weis were bad ass, and Chuck always appreciated they’d lent their code to Striker.) It was telling the UN to fuck off, you left the world to die, and we didn’t, so fuck you for trying to backpedal and offer us medical and pensions and medals. You want to sue us to oblivion? Sorry, but we own the patents, the land, the Shatterdomes, the public’s hearts and minds, and we are going to fucking do what you couldn’t.

As if hearing his thoughts, Chuck presses a hand on his shoulder, flirts easily with the reporter, distracts her with an easy quip. Herc doesn’t have to glance up to know that his son will bribe him with the promise of playing with the great-grandkids (just thinking that makes Herc tired), or maybe a shot of that whiskey they both pretend Herc hasn’t stashed away. They’d made a routine out of Drifting every so often, just to make sure they’d covered their bases - and if they tested out new equipment in the process, well, everyone knew what their real reasons were.

It’s not that Herc minds talking about it all. Far from it. It’s just - he never set out to be a hero. The history books have it all wrong; he didn’t want fame or power or even revenge. He was just doing what he thought was the right thing, at the right time, following his heart. And every time they bring out a reporter who says, “I read about you in school!” like he’s supposed to be somehow _proud_ they’ve never had to know what the scream of a kaiju sounds like, or the way the earth shook, or the flooding and the fire and the devastation that followed a kaiju and the jaeger who chased it - Herc wants to pretend he’s too old to hear.

Because the truth is - he didn’t do it for them. He did for Chuck, who he could save, and for Angela, who he couldn’t. And that’s a truth only a select few know, and it’s not one he’s ever going to share.


End file.
